Nicebirds of Paradise

Can you tell the story of a place from its animals? Or, perhaps to ask the question slightly differently, what can the local animals tell us about a place? While you mull these poignant queries and their possible insights into the fragile ecosystems of our earth, please do cast your eyes upon the little baby bird recently discovered on a window ledge in south east London as it appears in the photographs above and below.



If only the window had been a bit cleaner, it might be lamented, we would have had a better look at this nice bird, whose plaintive chirps and truly diminutive size suggested that he was making his maiden voyage from a nearby nest. Perhaps he had gotten confused or tired while flying and decided to rest here for a bit. In either case, the filmy window through which we observe him here only calls our attention back to the climate of England and the dismal, damp weather (note too the reflections of hubcaps off the wet pavement in the photograph above) in which most encounters with London animals must be made.



At the southwestern tip of the Iberian penisula, the city of Lisbon offers animal enthusiasts very different conditions. Dry, hot and sunny, Lisbon looks not entirely unlike parts of the San Francisco bay area. Note, for example, the Golden Gate Bridge look-alike in the far distance of the photograph above or the way in which the brightly colored bildings cling to the rolling hills like so many barnacles, as they do in the Bay Area.



Yet, some significant differences also apply. Namely, whereas the Bay Area is renowned for its innovative cuisine, gourmet dining and amazing produce, Old Ken must report that the food in Portugal is a pretty sad affair. And this is from a denizen of Britain—land of jellied eels, haggis and steak and kidney pie! How bad, you ask, can the food be? Well, let's play a little game of visualization, using the following as our key word: tomatoes. What comes to mind? Perhaps a succulent red fruit ripening on a vine in the summer sun? Okay, well take that tomato and suck out all the color and flavor. Then, add a whole bunch of chemicals, ship it halfway around the world, drop it on the floor a few times, cut it into thick slices, douse it in vinegar and serve it with some sorry romaine lettuce and slices of white onion. That, friends, is called "salada mista" (or mixed salad) Portugese style. The best!



Although it was chomping down on what appeared to be one of Portugal's few vegetarian meals, this hippopotamus—the notororious "river horse"—had come to resemble the food close to the nation's heart. Taut and darkened like a plump cooked sausage, this hippo from the Lisbon zoo (and what exactly was Old Ken doing at the zoo, you legitimately ask?) nonetheless registers the formidable heat of the city.



If it drove hippos to the trough—but, then again, what doesn't?—the heat clearly brought the city's golden retrievers to fountains in parks and public squares for a swim.



As Horace had it, ut humana canis. Unlike London, keeping cool by spending time out in the public space of the street—either sitting in a local square or in the doorway of the house—also seems to be part of the human culture. At least to Old Ken's eye, this more porous relationship between house and street seemed to encourage the kinds of colorful decoration (preparatory to the festival of San Antonio, Lisbon's patron saint) visible in the Alfama neighborhood as seen above.



If the indoors could extend outdoors, then the place for these nicebirds was definitely out in the street.



And far above the picturesque scenes of crumbling walls and colorful streamers baking in the heat, birds like the swallow above had some serious work to do—devouring insects, singing songs and so forth. If not a bird of paradise, this was certainly a paradise for birds. And let us just hope that our fledgling on the London window ledge was able to make it to safety—that he doesn't hear his tale told from bird paradise!

Dream Song; or, a Svetlana Alpers Tribute

I awoke one morning last week with this song in my head. Well, I had the tune and the first verse in my head. It took a little while to figure out the rest, but as I did so, it became clear who was trying to contact Old Ken through psychic networks: Svetlana Alpers. (For all who might not know, Ms. Alpers is a pioneering art historian whose books include the groundbreaking and controversial The Art of Describing of 1983).

In any case, here is the song so why not pick up a guitar, lute or ukelele and sing along with the tune that has this part of southeast London a-hummin'?

A little note on my transcription: for some reason, the software didn't like me writing out the chords over the lyrics according to conventional usage. Thus, what follows is a little typographically (and, of course, musically!) unattractive. Unless otherwise specified, all the chords repeat through the verse section. The rhythm is something like that of Belle and Sebastian's "The Boy with the Arab Strap" and the song sounds a bit like "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne (if that helps).

Svetlana Alpers

C
She's a knockout,
F
she's a perfect ten
C
She's a bombshell,
F
talks like Aphra Behn
G/G7
To me

Educated
in the USSR
Matriculated
at Harvard Yard
For free


Dm
Takin' on
Am
all the connoisseurs
F
and the
G
museum guys
Dm
Talkin' about
Am
photography
F
And the
G
period eye

Married to some
guy named Paul
Has an affair with
Michael Baxandall
Whooee!

Fired
from Berkeley CA
Hired
by the IFA
N-Y-C

Dm (etc.)

And some sad day, in times to come
When Svetlana Alpers dies
In the newspapers you'll read
Written in the headlines ... [back to the start]

Beware the Full Moon

If there is anything Old Ken has learned in this here country, it is this: beware the full moon! While this warning has nothing to do with this albino "hairy lobster" discovered deep at the bottom of some submarine trench in the Pacific (at least as far as I can tell), it may serve as an apt physiological prompt for the spine-tingling tales I want to unfurl for your delectation.

Now, I suppose I could begin with my latest encounter with the moon's power and the spectacles of ghoulish debauchery it seems capable of drawing forth on this here green earth. But, I'd rather assume the assume the overalls, strange hat and weathered drawl of the raconteur so that I can tell you about some scenes I observed on the night of a full moon last summer.

The year was 2005: George Bush was crusading for "freedom"; the British government was getting ready to "make poverty history" (and how!); and yours truly was on a lovely weekend getaway in Scotland. If we want to get specific—and why not?—it was the night of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, which also just so happened to coincide with a full moon. Well this little freakshow began when, upon landing at London Heathrow at around 9 PM, we boarded a little tarmac bus, which escorted us from the plane into the terminal. Although there were not many people on the plane, the genius-hats at the airport has supplied but one bus was used to ferry in all of the travelers. So, it was crowded.

Seated beside me was an older gent in a fetching beige suit; he was holding a very ancient looking leather brief case. Suit and attaché case appeared as though they had just been wrenched from a long slumber at the furthest, darkest reaches of a closet. Well, despite the fact that the bus was really packed and there were women and children standing in front of him, this suited character insisted on taking up two seats with his bag, case and other accessories. What really melted my heart and endeared this man to me forever, though, was his choice of mobile phone ring tone: “Auld Lang Syne.” As we will see, this is a tune that will recur in our tale.

Well, by the time we were on the Piccadilly line coming in from Heathrow, it was just about 11 PM. This is a precious moment to be on the train as it is pub closing time. So, if you like your drunks belligerent and vomit-y, this is the place to be. Soon enough, the token crazy guy gets into the car. Never one to disappoint, he is holding a can of lager in one hand and carrying on some incomprehensible conversation with an invisible interlocutor in a language that sounds like Romanian. While he disembarked fairly quickly, his warmed seat was taken a gent fully decked out in Scottish tartan outfit—a man who was not only about ten sheets to the wind but was cursing like a sailor at all and sundry.

As if we had not already had enough of things colorful and Scottish, a real treat awaited at Green Park station where we switched for the Jubilee line toward London Bridge. Like many of London's underground stations, Green Park has its share of "buskers" (street performers) who often play an instrument accompanied by recorded backing music, usually broadcast by some equivalent of the vaunted Gorilla brand amplifier. On this enchanted evening, the entertainment was provided by a man with a Ho-Chi-Minh-style moustache who was playing a searching version of “Auld Lang Syne” on the soprano saxophone while wearing sunglasses and a beret. Nicely done!



Question: if you have a fight between an alligator and a Burmese python, who wins? At least according to the photograph above, neither beast wins: the python swallows the alligator but then bursts! Perhaps we are the winners in such a case. But, I am afraid I definitely was not the winner on the full moon night in question. Here's why: once we had gotten to London Bridge, we caught an overland train. Like any train at that hour, this one was packed with people much worse for wear after long sessions in the pub. Now, it just so happened that our car was also shared with a strapping fellow in "tracky bottoms", white “trainers” and an England football jersey. While this sounds like a stereotype, what distinguished this man for the sake of our concerns here was the fact that he was eating a big baguette style sandwich. So doing, he sat down next to a pair of Asian women who were clearly deep into a conversation in their native tongue.

As the train began to roll, I looked over and saw this guy grabbing his crotch while eating the sandwich. An understandable and necessary move, I thought, as I imagine those track pants could bunch up uncomfortably, requiring some, er, readjustments. However, as I looked again, I realized that this was a readjustment of a far different kind. For the guy was doing three things simultaneously: craning his neck around to get a good look at the women; pulling on his member through his pants; and eating his sandwich. Readily, though, he decided to get his business firmly in order as he bi-passed the middle man and thrust his hand directly into his pants. While the nearby women seemed to take no notice, the effectiveness of his personal attentions had become clearly perceptible. And all the while he continued to bite ferociously into this big sandwich! Need we turn to Freud to decode this magic? Well, I don't know about you, but Old Ken blames it on the moon.

Practical Magic

One of the less pleasant spaces in ye olde London towne is the locker room in the basement of the British Library. Now, I use the phrase "locker room" and your mind may immediately conjure spirited hijinks and monkeyshines such as that to which Old Ken was (slightly mortified) witness many long years ago as a member of the SHS football team (Let's Go, Green!). Those, needless to say, are stories for another time. But, the kinship between the dank, fetid smells of a highschool locker room and the cramped, claustrophobia-inducing basement in which the authorities of the BL would have its users deposit their coats and bags is surprisingly close. Thus, stepping out of the driving rain yesterday morning, I braced myself as I crossed the foyer of the library, preparing to encounter the walk-in humidifier that is the basement.



Yet, to my surprise and delight, the rain had in fact yielded a minor miracle of interior decoration. For, many readers had simply placed left their open umbrellas along the top surface of the lockers themselves.



As you can see, the low-lying stormclouds that normally strafe the locker-tops suddenly dispersed, as my eyes swam in the warm glow of yellow lockers, purple polka-dots, and green clovers ... I mean, green lockers.



And although it is perhaps unrelated, on my way home, I found some unrefutable evidence of the apotheosis of a witch right there in the city street. From what I can tell, she must have been whisked up into the air so quickly that she left her broom behind.

I Packed My Trunk for Pachyderm

Well, the big talk in old London-town the last few days has been about a kind of street carnival that is currently being staged in the area around Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. As you may be able to guess from the photograph above, one of the protagonists in this act is a gigantic, artificial elephant; actually, this beast may be the eponymous centerpiece to the performance, which is known as "The Sultan's Elephant."

Now, the press coverage of this performance has been interesting to Old Ken, as it has brought to my attention a new wrinkle in the rich fabric that is the conception of the French among the English. This centers on the charge of "wackiness." Back on the flip side of the Atlantic, it seems there is some circulation of this idea—"Cirque de Soleil" and the inexplicable French fondness for Jerry Lewis being the most obvious manifestations. But, I suppose I had always thought that much of the stereotyping of the French in the English imagination had to do more with effeminancy, effeteness and affection for big (and thus, dangerous) ideas—the caricature of the mincing French courtier, eating peacock liver paté, while ruminanting over diabolical (i.e. Catholic) designs being exemplary. So, perhaps the leap from this kind of flightiness of mind to a love for ceremony (again, a stereotype of Catholic religiosity) and general wackiness isn't too far.



And while the French will figure in the little story Old Ken would like to offer on this fine afternoon, the fascination with elephants is surely one that the English seem to share in as well. Consider, for example, the amazing head of a pachyderm that has been constructed on the facade of a house on Lewisham Way in south east London. When I first encountered this creature, I had a difficult time discerning whether it was truly an elephant or perhaps some sort of roof repair project that had gone terribly wrong; indeed, it was a bit difficult to get an agreeable photograph.



Such was not the case with the amazing reconstruction of a fossilized mastodon, which I encountered in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy on a recent trip to Paris. Opened around the turn of the twentieth century, this museum (located inside the Jardin des Plantes in the fifth arrondissement) was a favorite haunt of yours truly back at a time when I was a denizen of that fair city. In these days of youth, I remember marvelling as much at the amazing metal-work of the armatures holding these skeletons together as the beasts themselves.



While the intricate biomorphism of the balcony railing visible in the previous photograph is perhaps a slightly more compelling example, it is fascinating to note the harmony between the interior architecture of the museum itself (its ribbed roofing, etc.) and the artifacts displayed therein.



From small projecting balconies, one can look down on this amazing calcified parade. It certainly brought to the mind of this experimentalist one particular account of a seventeenth century wherein the viewer described the experience of seeing such a collection of skeletons as like being a witness to the second coming when all the dead rise from their graves and begin to walk!



But, marvellous as these cetaceous creatures seen in the previous image are, it seems to me that there is something undeniably attractive to the imagination in contemplating an elephant. But why? Part of it, so it strikes Old Ken, is that there is something of the sublime about the creature; it is so massive, its tusks seem so agressive. And yet, most frequently we see them from behind some sort of protective barrier, insuring that they won't really hurt us. At the same time, though, elephants combine such strange quirks of evolutionary equipment (the aforementioned tusks, the trunk, massive ears, etc.) with traits that seem deceptively similar (the eye-lashes, knees—elephants being the only creatures, so I read, with four forward-bending ones). Thus, perhaps part of the attraction is that as massive and unusual as they are, elephants have sufficient features to allow us to imagine that they—more so than, say, whales—have something human about them: they are "like us."



Now, it has to be said that all of these fantasies of fear and wonder were being played out at Horse Guard's Parade grounds less than a mile from Downing Street where another elephant (at least if we follow the wonderful caricatures of Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell) was being sacrificed. That is, Home Secretary Charles Clarke was ass-canned by Tony Blair following some dire returns for the Labour party in the local council elections. While perhaps it is only coincidence that this wacky French theater group was staging their spectacle of the elephant on the day when Clarke would get the ax, might it only be that these Frenchies have an upcoming date in Washington DC to give a performance centering upon a gigantic ape and sweet, sweet lightning (that is—cue Donald Trump voice—"You're Fired!") will strike twice.